| Corsair Hydro H70 Liquid CPU Cooler |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Cooling | |||||||||||||||||
| Written by David Ramsey | |||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 07 February 2011 | |||||||||||||||||
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Corsair Hydro Series H70 CPU Cooler ReviewAlthough there were previous entries in the field, Corsair's Hydro Series H50 all-in-one sealed liquid cooling system was one of the first that actually worked, in the sense of being easy to install, reliable, and most importantly offering performance competitive with good air coolers while being quieter than most of them. The H50 became very popular and spurred competition from other vendors. The Corsair Hydro Series H70 improves upon the H50 design with a new pump and a much thicker radiator equipped with dual fans. It should offer significantly better performance than the H50, and Benchmark Reviews puts it to the test against a collection of air and water coolers to see how it compares. Since all retail CPUs are boxed with perfectly good coolers (which are pretty quiet), the main reason to buy an aftermarket cooler is its performance when your processor is overclocked. (There might be some who buy coolers based on the aesthetics of their appearance through a windowed CPU case, but we'll assume they're in the minority.) But while performance is certainly the main criterion, other factors must be taken into consideration as well, such as noise, size, and price. The ideal cooler keeps your processor at or near ambient temperature, is silent, free, and unfortunately doesn't exist. Manufacturers vary the performance, noise, size, and cost factors of their products to address different segments of the market.
Corsair made their reputation in the enthusiast market with their memory products, which offered excellent performance and impressive visuals (who else sells colored accessory fins for their memory modules?), and has begun branching out into other areas with some notable successes such as the original Hydro Series H50 and the award-winning Obsidian 800D case. They also sell power supplies and USB and SSD drives.
Manufacturer: Corsair Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Corsair. Corsair H70 Specifications
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Comments
I'll add to your note regarding the 'secret' pump performance. Besides the fluid flow, the fluid itself makes a difference and custom systems certainly have another advantage here. Different fluids and additives can increase heat transfer by decent margins. So if one is involved in serious overclocking, an open system has many advantages. But the simple and sealed packages such as the ALC and Corsair offerings are, as you said, a reliable, quiet, affordable, and easy way to increase heat displacement from the CPU.
Also note, the dual fan, push/pull configuration mounted to the radiator doesn't necessarily increase the CFM across the radiator by doubling the air flow (think of a fan as a pump for the fluid named 'air'). The same air moves through one fan, across the radiator, and then through the second radiator, fan speeds being equal. The air doesn't 'hover' around the radiator but is drawn more efficiently across the fins, and consistent pressure is maintained. To move more air, the fan speeds must be increased. Just as with any fluids, to increase flow, pumps must increase the fluid pressure. Adding more in-line pumps (fans) that all run at the same RPM doesn't increase flow, just maintains consistent pressure.
The h70 however has to be placed in the top of my cooler master cosmos s because otherwise it would interfere with the side intake fan. It runs on 1600 rpm and makes a lot more noise then my h50 (also had two fans) and runs 5C higher then the h50. Both are configured as exhausts btw.
I don't understand what causes this difference. Offcourse the sound is understandable since I had two of my own thermaltake iscg fans on it running at 1000 rpm! But still the h70 with 1600 and bigger radiator is 5C above the h50 with 38C in idle and around 42c when playing games.
If or when I get the backplate I'll do some testing wether or not there still is a big difference when I put it up in the same configuration and use the same fans as the H70.
A double-thick 120mm radiator offers the same surface area as a single-thickness 120x240mm radiator, although I think the latter would probably have a performance advantage due to better air flow.
60°C ? ... at the cores?
A highend aircooler will operate cooler even with a(good)silent 1200RPM fan like the Scythe S-Flex. I know this because i have one and its virtually silent on a Thermalright cooler. I have tested many, many fans and only the best 1200RPM fans are virtually silent, fans spinning at 1600/2000 RPM are just ridiculous.
Why would you put up with noise and pay a lot more for H70 when you can have a cheaper and virtually silent high end cooler. I can only assume some people have never experienced a silent system or know what is possible or have been sucked in by "water" cooling marketting.
And before anyone says "You can run the H70 with 1200RPM fans" the H70 suffers badly with fans at that speed and you can add 10 Degrees to temps.
I have a gpu which seems to make in non silent even at its factory de tuned super low power usage rates. as soon as it gets beyond 32% it is audible to my old ears and after 34% it is noisy. I have a good aftermarket cooler on one 5870 and it is quieter but not silent. so the notion of a silent system as far as the cpu cooler goes is out. But, there are some good 'quiet' fans which push a fair amount of air enough dramatically reduce my Phenom II 965 in the hot summer. I do not think these liquid all in ones ready for me and my price point as yet. It is good to know how much progress is being made. I have used enough of the well reviewed air cooler/heat sink types and changed fan with good sale silent fans or 100+ cfm represented ones with 'some' noise.
i enjoy the input here on this side of the review as well for the reservoir of experience and info.
your efforts are greatly appreciated here.